Pertinax

The father of Publius Helvius Pertinax was the freedman Helvius Successus, who admits that he gave his son his name from his continuing in the timber trade, because he carried on that business pertinaciously. Pertinax was born in the Apennines, in his mother's country house. At the very hour in which he was born, a young colt climbed up onto the roof-tiles and, after lingering there a little while, fell down and died. Moved by this, his father went to a Chaldaean, who, when he had foretold him a great future, said that he had lost his stock. As a boy he was instructed in elementary letters and in arithmetic, and was given over also to a Greek grammarian, and after that to Sulpicius Apollinaris, following whom this same Pertinax professed grammar. But since he made too little profit at it, through Lollianus Avitus, a man of consular rank and the patron of his father, he sought the dignity of commanding a maniple. Then, as prefect of a cohort, he set out for Syria in the reign of the Emperor Titus Aurelius, and by the governor of Syria, because he had used the public post without warrants, he was compelled to make his way on foot from Antioch to his post.

In the Parthian War, having earned merit by his diligence, he was transferred to Britain and retained there; afterward in Moesia he commanded a cavalry squadron. Then he was procurator of the distribution of food-allowances on the Aemilian Way. Next he commanded the German fleet; his mother accompanied him as far as Germany and there died, and her tomb is even now said to stand. Thence, advanced to a salary of two hundred thousand sesterces, he was transferred to Dacia, and, being viewed with suspicion by Marcus through the intrigues of certain men, he was removed; and afterward, through Claudius Pompeianus, the son-in-law of Marcus, he was taken on, as if to be his assistant, to command auxiliary detachments. Approved in this office, he was enrolled in the senate. Afterward, when he had again done well, the cabal which had been contrived against him was exposed; and the Emperor Marcus, to compensate for the wrong, made him praetorian and put him in command of the First Legion, and at once he delivered Raetia and Noricum from the enemy. From this his diligence shone forth, and by the zeal of the Emperor Marcus he was designated consul. There survives in Marius Maximus a speech containing his praises and all that he both did and endured. And besides that speech, which it would be long to weave in, very often was Pertinax praised by Marcus both in the military assembly and in the senate; and Marcus openly grieved that he was a senator and so could not be made prefect of the guard by him. When the rising of Cassius had been settled, he set out from Syria to guard the Danube, and thence received the government of both Moesias, and soon of Dacia; and having managed these provinces well, he earned Syria.

Pertinax kept himself upright up to the government of Syria; but after the death of Marcus he became eager for money, and was even assailed by popular sayings on that account. He entered the Roman senate-house after four consular provinces—since he had held his consulship while absent—now a rich man, though as a senator he had not seen it before. He was ordered, moreover, at once by Perennis to withdraw to Liguria, to his father's country house; for his father had carried on a fuller's shop in Liguria. But after he came to Liguria, having bought up many fields, he surrounded his father's shop—its old form remaining—with countless buildings, and was there for three years, and traded through his own slaves. When indeed Perennis had been killed, Commodus made amends to Pertinax and asked him by letter to set out for Britain. Having set out, he deterred the soldiers from all sedition, when they wanted to have whatever emperor they pleased, and Pertinax himself in particular. Then Pertinax incurred a mark of ill-will, because he was said to have accused before Commodus, of aiming at the empire, Antistius Burrus and Arrius Antoninus. And the seditions against himself he indeed suppressed in Britain; but he ran into great danger, almost killed in a mutiny of a legion, and was certainly left for dead among the slain—a thing which this same Pertinax avenged most fiercely. Then afterward he sought leave to give up his post, saying that the legions were hostile to him because he had upheld discipline.

A successor having been received, the charge of the food-allowances was entrusted to him. Then he was made proconsul of Africa. In this proconsulship he is said to have endured many seditions, owing to the prophetic utterances of the songs which issue from the temple of Caelestis. After this he was made prefect of the city, and in this prefecture, after Fuscianus, a severe man, Pertinax was most mild and most humane, and was very pleasing to Commodus himself, because . . . to him it was a second time that he was made [consul] together with Pertinax. Then Pertinax did not shun the knowledge, betrayed to him by others, of the killing of Commodus. Now, Commodus having been slain, Laetus, the prefect of the guard, and Eclectus, the chamberlain, came to him and gave him assurance and led him into the camp. There Pertinax addressed the soldiers, promised a donative, and said that the empire was being thrust upon him by Laetus and Eclectus. But it was pretended that Commodus had died of disease, since they were afraid that the soldiers, if otherwise informed, might make trouble. At first, then, Pertinax was hailed emperor by a few; but he was made emperor, more than sixty years old, on the day before the Kalends of January. When he had come by night from the camp to the senate and had ordered the chamber of the senate-house to be opened, and no sacristan could be found, he sat down in the Temple of Concord; and when Claudius Pompeianus, the son-in-law of Marcus, had come to him and had wept over the fate of Commodus, Pertinax urged him to take the empire; but he refused, since he already saw Pertinax as emperor. At once, therefore, all the magistrates came with the consul to the senate-house, and as Pertinax entered they hailed him by night

as emperor. Pertinax himself, after his praises had been spoken by the consuls and after the censure of Commodus had been displayed by the acclamations of the senate, gave thanks to the senate, and especially to Laetus, the prefect of the guard, by whose agency both Commodus had been slain and he himself had been made emperor. But when Pertinax had given thanks to Laetus, the consul Falco said: "What kind of emperor you will be, we understand from this—that we see Laetus and Marcia, the ministers of Commodus' crimes, surviving after you." To him Pertinax replied: "You are a young consul, and you do not know the necessities of obedience. They obeyed Commodus unwillingly; but when they had the opportunity, they showed what they had always wished." On the same day on which he was called Augustus, his wife Flavia Titiana too was called Augusta, in the very hours in which he was paying his vows on the Capitol. First indeed of all, on the same day on which he was called Augustus, he received also the name of Father of his Country, and likewise at the same time the proconsular power, and likewise the right of a fourth motion—which served as an omen for Pertinax. Setting out, therefore, to the Palace, which was then empty, since Commodus had been killed in the Vectilian villa, he gave to the tribune who asked for the watchword on the first day "Let us be soldiers," reproaching of course the slackness of former times—which indeed he had also given before in all his commands.

But that reproach the soldiers did not endure, and at once they began to think of changing the emperor. On that day too he invited the magistrates and the chief men of the senate to a banquet, a custom which Commodus had neglected. Indeed, on the day following the Kalends, when the statues of Commodus were being thrown down, the soldiers groaned, and at the same time because the emperor had again given the same watchword. For military service was feared under an old emperor; and so, on the third day before the Nones, during the vows themselves, the soldiers wished to lead into the camp Triarius Maternus Lascivius, a noble senator, that they might set him over the affairs of Rome. But he fled naked and came to Pertinax in the Palace, and afterward departed from the city. Compelled indeed by fear, Pertinax confirmed all that Commodus had given to the soldiers and veterans; he said too that he undertook the empire from the senate, though he had already entered upon it of his own accord; he abolished altogether the charge of treason, with an oath; he recalled also those who had been deported on the charge of treason, restoring the memory of those who had been killed. The senate called his son Caesar; but Pertinax did not accept either the title of Augusta for his wife, and concerning his son he said: "When he has earned it." And since Commodus had mixed countless adlections among the praetorian ranks, Pertinax passed a decree of the senate and ordered that those who had not held praetorships but had received the rank by adlection should rank after those who had truly been praetors. But by this too he stirred up against himself great hatred from many.

He ordered the census to be revised, and ordered convicted informers to be severely punished—and yet more gently than former emperors—setting a penalty for each rank, should it incur the charge of being an informer. He passed a law, too, that earlier wills should not be invalid before others were completed, nor that on this account the imperial treasury should ever succeed. And he himself declared that he would accept no inheritance which had either been bequeathed through flattery of someone or was entangled in dispute, so that the lawful and proper heirs should be deprived. And he added to the decree of the senate these words: "It is better, conscript fathers, to hold a needy commonwealth than to come to a heap of riches by the tracks of perils and disgraces." The donatives and largesses which Commodus had promised, he paid; he provided most wisely for the grain-supply; and although he had such poverty of the treasury that he confessed he had found no more than a million sesterces, he was compelled to exact those things which Commodus had imposed, contrary to what he had professed. Finally, when Lollianus Gentianus, a man of consular rank, assailed him for acting against his promise, he accepted the plea of necessity. He held an auction of the goods of Commodus, so that he ordered even the boys and the concubines to be sold, except those who seemed to have been brought into the Palace by force. And of those whom he ordered sold, many were afterward brought back to service and gave delight to the old man—men who indeed under other princes rose even to senatorial rank. The buffoons who bore disgraceful names as marks of disgrace, he proscribed and sold. The money of this sale, which

was enormous, he gave to the soldiers as a donative. From the freedmen too he exacted those things by which they had been enriched while Commodus was selling. The auction of Commodus' goods was indeed more remarkable for these things: clothing with a silk woof, marked with golden threads of fine workmanship; tunics and traveling-cloaks, mantles and the sleeved garments of the Dalmatians, and the curled military garments, and Greek-style and camp purple cloaks; and Bardaic hooded cloaks; and the toga and the gladiatorial arms composed with gems and gold; and Herculean swords and gladiatorial collars, and vessels composed of clay, gold, ivory, silver, and citrus-wood; and even glass instruments of indecency made of the same material, and Samnite vessels for warming resin and pitch to pluck and smooth men's bodies; and likewise carriages of novel craftsmanship, with the rims of the wheels interlaced and divided, and exquisite seats, now turning to keep off the sun, now revolving for the convenience of the breeze; and others that measured the journey and showed the hours; and the rest suited to his vices. He restored, moreover, to their masters those who had betaken themselves from private houses into the court; he recalled the imperial banquet from an immense scale to a fixed measure; and he cut down all the expenses of Commodus. By the example of the emperor, since he conducted himself more frugally, cheapness was born of the self-restraint of all. For he cut the imperial expenditure, the unnecessary persons being driven out, to half the customary amount,

He established rewards for the soldiers. The debt which he had contracted at the first time of his reign, he paid; he restored the treasury to its proper state; he fixed a definite sum for public works; he contributed money for the repair of the roads; he paid off the pay owed in arrears to very many; finally, for the discharge of all duties, he made the treasury equal to them. The arrears of the food-allowances too, which for nine years had been owing according to the institution of Trajan, he abolished, with hardened modesty. As a private man he was not free of the suspicion of avarice, since at Vada Sabatia, having crushed the landholders with usury, he extended his boundaries more widely; and finally, from a verse of Lucilius, he was called "the field-grabbing diver." Many, moreover, recorded in their writings that even in the provinces which he governed as a man of consular rank he conducted himself basely; for he is said to have sold exemptions and military commissions. Finally, although his parents' patrimony was very small, and no inheritance had come to him, he suddenly became rich. To all indeed he restored their possessions of which Commodus had deprived them, but not without a price. He always attended the lawful sittings of the senate and always brought forward some matter. He always showed himself courteous to those who greeted and addressed him. Those who had been assailed by the calumnies of slaves he freed, the informers being more severely condemned, such slaves being raised to the cross; and some he even avenged when dead.

The consul Falco prepared a plot against him, who complained in the senate, wishing to rule; whom indeed the senate believed when a certain slave, as if the son of Fabia . . . of the family of Ceionius Commodus, had ridiculously claimed the Palatine house, and, being recognized, was ordered to be beaten with scourges and restored to his master; in whose punishment those who hated Pertinax are said to have found an occasion for sedition. Yet he spared Falco and sought impunity for him from the senate. Finally, Falco lived secure in his affairs and died with his son as heir—although many have said that Falco did not know the empire was being procured for him; others, too, said that he was assailed by the false testimonies of slaves who had embezzled the accounts. But a cabal against Pertinax was prepared by Laetus, the prefect of the guard, and by those whom Pertinax's strictness had offended. For Laetus had repented of having made Pertinax emperor, because Pertinax reproached him as a foolish revealer of certain matters. It seemed grievous to the soldiers, moreover, that in the case of Falco he had ordered many soldiers to be killed on the testimony of a single slave.

Three hundred soldiers, therefore, armed and formed into a wedge, came from the camp to the imperial dwelling. On that same day, however, while Pertinax was sacrificing, it is said that no heart was found in the victim; and when he wished to expiate this, he did not find the head of the entrails. And at that time all the soldiers were remaining in the camp; and when they had come from the camp to do homage to the prince, and Pertinax had, on account of the omen of the sacrifice, postponed the procession which he had prepared to the Athenaeum in order to hear a poet, those who had come to do homage began to return to the camp. But suddenly that band reached the Palace, and could neither be kept off nor announced to the emperor. For indeed so great was the hatred of all the courtiers toward Pertinax that they urged the soldiers on to the deed. They came upon Pertinax while he was arranging the court household, and entered the colonnades of the Palace as far as the place which is called Sicily and the Dining-Hall of Jupiter. On learning this, Pertinax sent Laetus, the prefect of the guard, to them; but he, avoiding the soldiers, went out through the colonnades and, with his head covered, betook himself home. But when they burst into the inner rooms, Pertinax came forward to them and pacified them with a long and weighty speech; but when a certain Tausius, one of the Tungri, had brought the soldiers, by his words, into anger and fear, he hurled his spear into the breast of Pertinax. Then Pertinax, having prayed to Jupiter the Avenger, covered his head with his toga and was stabbed by the rest. And Eclectus, indeed, having struck down two of them, perished along with him; but the rest of the palace chamberlains—for he had at once, when he was hailed emperor, given his own slaves to his sons after emancipating them—scattered in flight. Many indeed say that the soldiers even burst into the bedchamber and there killed Pertinax as he fled around the bed.

He was a venerable old man, with a long beard and hair combed back, of a rather plump bodily habit, with a slightly protruding belly, of imperial stature, of moderate eloquence, and more ingratiating than kindly, and never believed to be sincere; and although in words he was affable, in fact he was illiberal and almost mean—so that in private life he would set out at his banquets halved lettuces and cardoons; and unless some delicacy had been sent in, however many his friends were, he would set out nine pounds of meat in three courses; but if anything more had been sent in, he would even put it off to another day, though he always invited many to dinner. As emperor too, if he was without guests, he would dine in the same fashion. To his friends, if ever he wished to send anything from his lunch, he would send a couple of bits or a portion of tripe, sometimes the loins of fowls. He never ate a pheasant at a private banquet or sent one to anyone. When he dined without friends, he brought in his wife and Valerianus, who had taught with him, so that he might have learned conversation. He changed none of those whom Commodus had set over affairs, awaiting the birthday of the city, because he wished that day to be the beginning of his measures; and for this reason too the servants of Commodus are said to have prepared his death in the baths.

He so shrank from the empire and all its trappings that he always showed it displeased him; in short, he wished to seem no other than he had been. In the senate he was most respectful, so that he saluted the favoring senate and, as if he were prefect of the city, shared conversation with all. He even wished to lay down the empire and return to private life; he refused that his sons should be reared in the Palace. So sparing, moreover, and so eager for gain was he, that at Vada Sabatia, as emperor, he carried on trade through his own men, just as he had been wont to do as a private man. And yet he was not much loved; for all who freely exchanged stories spoke ill of Pertinax, calling him a "Christologos"—one who spoke well and acted badly. For even his fellow-townsmen, who had flocked to him when he was now emperor and had merited nothing from him, called him so. He also gladly accepted gifts out of love of gain. He left surviving a son and a daughter and his wife, the daughter of Flavius Sulpicianus, whom he had made prefect of the city in his own place. Concerning his wife's chastity he was too little careful, since she openly loved a lyre-player; he himself, moreover, is said to have loved Cornificia most infamously. The court freedmen he most vigorously suppressed, whence too he incurred great hatred.

The signs of his death were these: he himself, three days before he was killed, seemed to see in a fishpond a man attacking him with a sword. And on the day on which he was killed, men said that the pupils of his eyes did not show the images which they return to those who look into them. And when he was sacrificing at the shrine of the Lares, the most lively coals went out, though they are wont to flame up; and, as was said above, the heart and head were not found in the victims; and stars too were seen by day, most bright beside the sun, on the day before he died. And he himself is said to have given an omen concerning his successor Julianus; for when Didius Julianus had offered him his brother's son, to whom he was betrothing his own daughter, he exhorted the youth to obedience to his uncle and added: "Observe my colleague and my successor"—for Julianus had before been his colleague in the consulship and had succeeded him in the proconsulship. The soldiers and the courtiers held him in hatred; the people bore his death most indignantly, because they saw that through him all the old ways could be restored. His head, fixed on a pike, the soldiers who had killed him carried through the city to the camp. His remains, the head recovered, were placed in the tomb of his wife's grandfather. And Julianus, his successor, buried his body with as much honor as he could, when he had found it in the Palace—though he never made any mention of him, either before the people or before the senate, publicly. But when he himself too was now deserted by the soldiers, Pertinax was, through the senate and the people,

enrolled among the gods. Under the Emperor Severus, moreover, since Pertinax had had a great testimony from the senate, an effigy-funeral and a censorial procession were conducted for him, and he was honored with a funeral eulogy by Severus himself. And Severus himself, out of love for a good prince, received from the senate the name of Pertinax; the son of Pertinax was made flamen to his father. The Marcian fellowships, which had charge of the rites of the deified Marcus, were called Helvian on account of Helvius Pertinax. Games of the circus and a birthday of the empire were added, which were afterward abolished by Severus, and birthday games, which remain. Now he was born on the Kalends of August in the consulship of Verus and Ambibulus, and was killed on the fifth day before the Kalends of April in the consulship of Falco and Clarus. He lived sixty years, seven months, and twenty-six days. He reigned two months and twenty-five days. He gave to the people a largess of a hundred denarii apiece; to the praetorians he promised twelve thousand sesterces but gave six. What was promised to the armies was not given, because death forestalled him. That he shrank from the empire, a letter shows, which was appended to his Life by Marius Maximus, which I have not wished to insert on account of its excessive length.